Notes from the Underground by Medeski, Martin & Wood is super strong and you should listen to it if you haven’t already. A considerable time ago I added this to a list of albums to listen to later, then promptly forgot it. Last night, amid a great culling of ‘saved albums’, I took a moment to listen to a track — which immediately became the impetus to sit with the full album. It was time very well spent. (Spotify link here)

Two (+) weeks into our physical distancing regime, I find that music is taking a more central role in my daily. At the start, I suspected I would be reading a lot but I have read less than 25 pages from books in the last two weeks. Any reading is either online or from the Sunday paper. Instead it’s mostly banjo, piano*, learning how to read music and learn [music] theory, and–of course–listening to albums.

Over the course of the week, I came across this piece on getting outside of one’s comfort zone, musically, and recommend it. Ed Jong (author of I Contain Multitudes) has a piece in The Atlantic: How the Pandemic Will End which i highly recommend. I also stumbled across an interesting page on shipping Honeybees (and live Scorpions) through the mail: it seems there are rules.

Jamil Hellu has something going on he’s calling 24 Variations for a Stoning Rock and I can’t really say that I understand the presentation in the .gif format. It did get me thinking though. In 2010, a photojournalist for the AP, Farah Warsameh reported on a stoning in Somalia; that work–reportage–necessarily left a lot less to the imagination. No links will be provided here. If you want to find it, be forewarned that it is just dark.

and on that note….

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